The spin keeps the bullet spinning on a fixed axis - it could be going sideways down range, or if disturbed it will tumble out of control.
The spin lasts a long time - in most cases it's still spinning when it hits the deck. There's minimal resistance otherwise to slow the spin. There's video of 9mm bullets fired into ice and they keep spinning. Mythbusters did this too.
Repeating that won't make is so.
The projectile remains aligned point first with it's path of travel during it's entire arc.
They never go "sideways".[/quote]
That is not necessarily the case. For example, a bullet which is overstabilised will tend to remain aligned with its angle of departure, rather than "nosing over" to follow the trajectory as we get out to very long range. There are also a number of forces at play tending to cause a bullet to yaw in flight, and not just at very long range, and bullets will tend to drift sideways as a result of wind and spin drift, among other things.
There's a rather good treatment of these questions a fellow named Ruprecht Nennstiel put together a while back :
http://www.nennstiel-ruprecht.de/bullfly/
Over-stabilized would be an anomaly.
No, not really. Bullets tend to lose forward velocity fast, but rotational velocity much more slowly. For most purposes it isn't an issue, but there are times when it is. It was first noticed after modern long-range rifles artillery, when point-detonating shells were noticed to have a high incidence of "blinds", as they were actually not hitting point first at extended range. At extreme ranges the same can occur with rifle bullets - they land like an aircraft coming in with flaps extended, rather than nose first, as the bullet axis remains more or less aligned with the axis of departure.
"Yaw" is a wobble back and forth along the axis of travel and it's center of gravity.
It doesn't mean the projectile is traveling sideways
It is yet another example of the bullet axis not following the path of travel, which is why I mentioned it.
Wind drift and rotational "drift" don't mean the projectile is travelling "sideways" in regards to the direction of it's intended main path.
On the contrary, they mean exactly that. The bullet is indeed travelling sideways. Think of vectors - do they teach that in high school? As well, the bullet axis is not aligned with the direction in which the bullet is travelling. In the case of wind drift, for example, the typical bullet will be facing its nose into the wind as it drifts.[/quote]
You still just keep
repeating yourself and going off on unrelated tangents like "artillery" and "wind drift".
They have nothing to do with the context of what I said.
At no point during it's flight does a normal projectile
turn sideways to it's direction of travel.
